Peace Meal

Episode description:

Social media can shape how we think about food, bodies, and ourselves—but what happens when algorithms actively steer vulnerable young people toward harmful content? On this episode of Peace Meal, Joel Wright, founder of Wright Law Group, joins Jillian Lampert to discuss the legal action seeking to hold social media companies accountable for the ways their platforms can contribute to harm, including eating disorder development and maintenance.

Drawing from his legal work and his personal experience as a parent of a child who has experienced an eating disorder, Joel discusses how algorithms can amplify eating disorder and body-related content, what changes could make social media safer, and why parents and families may need more control over what young people see online. He also shares advice for parents, including the importance of modeling healthy technology habits and recognizing potential warning signs.

About Joel:

Joel Wright is the founder of Wright Law Group and has practiced law for more than 25 years. He works closely with affected families, treatment providers, and eating-disorder organizations to help people understand their legal rights and advocate for safer social media platforms.

Joel lives in Utah with his wife, five children, and two dogs. His family has a history of eating disorders, giving his work a deeply personal dimension. He enjoys hiking, mountain biking, yoga, food made with love, and disconnecting from his phone.

We cover:

How social media algorithms can amplify eating disorder and body-related content

Why eating disorders are an important part of the broader conversation around social media-related harm

What changes could make social media platforms safer for young people

How families can think about participating in legal action against social media companies

Advice for parents on recognizing potential eating disorder warning signs and modeling healthy technology habits

In Joel’s words:

On why social media algorithms matter: “Eating disorder content has been proven to be very sticky and generate a lot of screen time with young women.”

On creating safer social media: “Deliberately stop escalating weight loss, body comparison, eating disorder content. I mean, Jillian, for the power of social media, let's just say that they deliberately downgraded that and they deliberately upgraded healthy positive body image stuff. How much would that change our youth in a matter of months?”

On parents modeling healthy technology habits: “Parents, you need to model good behavior. Do you turn your phone off? … Phones are prohibited at our dinner table. Everyone in my family has the right to tell me or someone else, ‘Turn off your phone and pay attention to me.’”

Learn more about the lawsuit on Joel's website and contact Joel and his team by calling or texting 844-335-2978. 

About the podcast:

Peace Meal is a podcast hosted by The Emily Program that covers topics related to eating disorders, body image, and how society may influence our thinking.

You can find Peace Meal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube Music. If you enjoy our show, please rate, review, subscribe, and tell your friends!

Are you interested in being a guest on Peace Meal? Email [email protected] for more information.

Episode description:

Weight stigma is woven into nearly every part of our society, from healthcare and the media to the design of public spaces and comments made in everyday conversation. Its message to people in larger bodies is that their bodies are wrong, and that the wrongness is theirs to fix. In recognition of Weight Stigma Awareness Week, Jillian follows that stigma into a place it does some of its deepest damage: the development, maintenance, and diagnosis of eating disorders.

We cover:

How internalized weight bias can drive disordered behaviors

What the “atypical anorexia” diagnosis reveals about weight assumptions baked into diagnostic criteria

How to recognize and challenge weight bias in yourself and your environment

About Dr. Jillian Lampert:

Dr. Lampert (she/her), PhD, MPH, RD, LD, FAED, is the Senior Vice President for Strategic Engagement and Experience for The Emily Program. She completed her doctorate degree in Nutrition and Epidemiology and Master of Public Health degree in Public Health Nutrition at the University of Minnesota. She earned a Master of Science degree in Nutrition at the University of Vermont and completed her dietetic internship at the University of Minnesota Hospital and Clinics. She has an expansive range of policy, clinical, research, education, teaching, and program development experience in the area of eating disorders.

Learn more about The Emily Program online or by calling 1-888-364-5977. 

Have a topic on your mind?

We want Between Bites to speak to what matters most to you. If there’s a topic you’d like us to cover in a future episode, let us know! Your questions and ideas help shape the conversation. Email [email protected] or send us a message on social.

About the podcast:

Peace Meal is a podcast hosted by The Emily Program that covers topics related to eating disorders, body image, and how society may influence our thinking.

Between Bites is a Peace Meal series of short, focused episodes hosted by Dr. Jillian Lampert and designed to offer quick insights and meaningful support for eating disorder recovery.

You can find Peace Meal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube Music. You can also watch the podcast on YouTube. If you enjoy our show, please rate, review, subscribe, and tell your friends!

Are you interested in being a guest on Peace Meal? Email [email protected] for more information.

Episode description:

Katelyn Olmsted first joined Peace Meal in 2025 to talk about her eating disorder, her time in treatment, and the book she began writing while in care. Now a year further into recovery, she returns to the show as a college student with a second book out in the world. The Recovery Click started with a single text Katelyn sent to a friend from treatment (“what made you want to choose recovery?”) and grew from there: interviews with people in recovery and the therapeutic assistants who watched them pursue it, and reflections from Katelyn herself on the daily practices that keep her choosing recovery too.

About Katelyn:

Katelyn Olmsted is an advocate and author. Her first book, Daily Dos of an Eating Disorder to Recovery, grew from her time in treatment and was published in 2023. Her second book, The Recovery Click, was published in 2026. Katelyn lives with her family in the Charlotte, North Carolina area and is on a mission to help others in eating disorder recovery.

We cover:

Why your reason for choosing recovery can change from day to day

How Katelyn’s 7-21 Challenge became a habit among her college friends

How her recovery changed when she left home and started college

Why her college dining hall became an unexpected source of food freedom

What Katelyn would say to someone still waiting for their own “recovery click”

In Katelyn’s words:

On the daily choice of recovery: “In my early times of treatment…I would wake up, I would journal, and I would write down one thing that was going to be, like, what I’m going to choose for recovery. So you could wake up and be like, ‘Today I’m going to choose it for my dog,’ and tomorrow, ‘I’m going to choose it because I’m done having a bad relationship with food.’”

On her evolving relationship with food: “You come to a dining hall and you see all these people eating, nourishing their body three times a day…And it just really makes you realize, like ‘Wow, I’m supposed to eat?’ This shouldn’t be something that I’m scared to do or nervous that people are going to judge me, because it’s genuinely just so normal, as it should be.”

On talking back to the eating disorder: “Get another chair, put it in front of you, and make your eating disorder sit there—I know it sounds silly, but we did this in treatment. And then you tell your eating disorder what you want it to hear. Don’t let your eating disorder tell you what it wants you to hear. You say, ‘I may not know what my recovery click is, but…I want to do this. I can do this…I don’t want to be fighting myself every day.’”

You can purchase Katelyn’s books, Daily Dos of an Eating Disorder to Recovery and The Recovery Click, on Amazon.

About the podcast:

Peace Meal is a podcast hosted by The Emily Program that covers topics related to eating disorders, body image, and how society may influence our thinking.

You can find Peace Meal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube Music. If you enjoy our show, please rate, review, subscribe, and tell your friends!

Are you interested in being a guest on Peace Meal? Email [email protected] for more information.

Episode description:

When a well-known person’s body is suddenly all anyone can talk about, the pull to pile on—or to compare yourself against them—can be strong.

Jillian’s general guidance is simple: we’re typically better off not commenting on other people’s bodies at all. But the real exception is genuine concern for someone in your life, and she models the I-framed language that can help keep a comment from tipping into judgment. She also gets practical for the adults listening, including how to have conversations with kids about what they’re seeing online, why what you say about your own body in front of them matters, and how to talk about comparison itself, which rarely leaves anyone feeling better.

We cover:

Why you can admire a public figure and still have reservations about them

What age-appropriate body talk sounds like with kids

How media literacy can start at home

Resources mentioned:

The National Alliance for Eating Disorders

About Dr. Jillian Lampert:

Dr. Lampert (she/her), PhD, MPH, RD, LD, FAED, is the Senior Vice President for Strategic Engagement and Experience for The Emily Program. She completed her doctorate degree in Nutrition and Epidemiology and Master of Public Health degree in Public Health Nutrition at the University of Minnesota. She earned a Master of Science degree in Nutrition at the University of Vermont and completed her dietetic internship at the University of Minnesota Hospital and Clinics. She has an expansive range of policy, clinical, research, education, teaching, and program development experience in the area of eating disorders.

Learn more about The Emily Program online or by calling 1-888-364-5977. 

Have a topic on your mind?

We want Between Bites to speak to what matters most to you. If there’s a topic you’d like us to cover in a future episode, let us know! Your questions and ideas help shape the conversation. Email [email protected] or send us a message on social.

About the podcast:

Peace Meal is a podcast hosted by The Emily Program that covers topics related to eating disorders, body image, and how society may influence our thinking.

Between Bites is a Peace Meal series of short, focused episodes hosted by Dr. Jillian Lampert and designed to offer quick insights and meaningful support for eating disorder recovery.

You can find Peace Meal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube Music. You can also watch the podcast on YouTube. If you enjoy our show, please rate, review, subscribe, and tell your friends!

Are you interested in being a guest on Peace Meal? Email [email protected] for more information.

**Content warning: This episode includes discussion of suicidal ideation and a suicide attempt. Please use your discretion when listening and speak with your support system as needed. If you are experiencing suicidal thoughts, contact the National Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by texting or calling 988. LGBTQ+ young people can also reach The Trevor Project 24/7 by calling 1-866-488-7386, texting START to 678-678, or chatting online. 

Episode description:

Danny Wakefield joins Peace Meal to share his story of recovery from an eating disorder—a “full circle moment,” he calls it, as an alum of The Emily Program. Danny didn’t recognize the earliest signs of their eating disorder until they entered care and traced its roots back to body comparisons with their twin sister that started at age three.

Getting into treatment as an adult wasn’t simple. Seeking any kind of medical care as a transgender person comes with its own barriers. For Danny, that included the internalized belief that eating disorder treatment wasn’t for someone like him. Body-size bias among providers also meant their illness wasn’t taken as seriously as it should have been. It took a mental health crisis and a message sent in desperation before Danny found their way to The Emily Program.

Danny and Jillian talk through what came next: an extended stay in residential treatment, the levels of care that followed, and a recovery that became “so much bigger than just food.” Danny closes with a message for anyone who doesn't believe recovery is possible: it starts with “a tiny moment of willingness,” and hope borrowed from someone else until you can hold it yourself.

About Danny:

Danny Wakefield (he/they) is a transmasculine, nonbinary parent, storyteller, and advocate whose work centers mental health, recovery, and resilience. Danny is passionate about supporting transgender youth and families through sharing his own experience, strength, and hope with others as a public voice in the transgender community. They have walked through addiction, eating disorder recovery, suicidality, and along that journey, has found profound joy and self-love.

We cover:

What made treatment genuinely affirming for Danny

Why the move from residential to partial hospitalization was his hardest transition

How DBT (Dialectical Behavior Therapy) became a lasting skill set

The assumptions about recovery that follow people out of treatment

Whose stories the field must make room for

In Danny’s words:

On his first days in treatment: “I didn’t know it then, but walking through those doors was one of the bravest things that I’ve ever done. In those first three or four days…everything felt new. And at the same time, that newness was replacing the hopelessness that I had felt for so long…Even though I was scared and terrified and, [in] many moments, didn't want to be there, I knew that my wants were different than my needs, and I needed to be right where I was.”

On what recovery has given them: “I didn’t have much joy…I have this joy now that I am building this life worth living. That looks like finding joy in bike rides, finding joy in the sun. Just yesterday, I was putting my child to bed, and I was like, this is the joy. Even when bedtimes are hard, I am still here for this bedtime. I get to put my child to bed…the joy of being able to parent in the ways that I am able to parent is a result of this recovery.”

On what they’d tell someone who doesn’t believe recovery is possible for them: “I stayed there for a very long time. There were many moments when I was convinced I was too complicated or too broken or too far gone to recover. And gratefully, I was wrong…If there are any trans or nonbinary youth specifically or adults listening, please hear me when I say this: You are so worthy and so deserving of seeking help and support, and living a life worth living is absolutely possible, even if you can't see it for yourself yet.”

Connect with Danny on Instagram (@dannythetransdad).

Additional Resources:

If cost or life circumstances are barriers to accessing eating disorder treatment, the following organizations may be able to help:

WithAll: Offers grants covering housing or groceries so people can stay in intensive treatment. Applications open the first of each month.

Project HEAL: Works to remove financial, systemic, and healthcare barriers to treatment through cash assistance, case management, and treatment placement.

About the podcast:

Peace Meal is a podcast hosted by The Emily Program that covers topics related to eating disorders, body image, and how society may influence our thinking.

You can find Peace Meal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube Music. If you enjoy our show, please rate, review, subscribe, and tell your friends!

Are you interested in being a guest on Peace Meal? Email [email protected] for more information.

Episode description:

An estimated 16% of the world's population lives with a disability. Yet people with disabilities are woefully underrepresented in eating disorder research. As a result, disability often goes underaddressed in eating disorder treatment, and eating disorders often go unrecognized in people with disabilities. 

In this episode, Dr. Jillian Lampert examines that gap and what it costs the people caught in it—and what it looks like when care starts with curiosity and listening instead of assumptions.

We cover:

Why people with disabilities can face unique eating disorder risks 

When an eating disorder itself is a disability

How treatment programs can become accessible

About Dr. Jillian Lampert:

Dr. Lampert (she/her), PhD, MPH, RD, LD, FAED, is the Vice President of Strategy and Public Affairs for The Emily Program. She completed her doctorate degree in Nutrition and Epidemiology and Master of Public Health degree in Public Health Nutrition at the University of Minnesota. She earned a Master of Science degree in Nutrition at the University of Vermont and completed her dietetic internship at the University of Minnesota Hospital and Clinics. She has an expansive range of policy, clinical, research, education, teaching, and program development experience in the area of eating disorders.

Learn more about The Emily Program online or by calling 1-888-364-5977. 

Have a topic on your mind?

We want Between Bites to speak to what matters most to you. If there’s a topic you’d like us to cover in a future episode, let us know! Your questions and ideas help shape the conversation. Email [email protected] or send us a message on social.

About the podcast:

Peace Meal is a podcast hosted by The Emily Program that covers topics related to eating disorders, body image, and how society may influence our thinking.

Between Bites is a Peace Meal series of short, focused episodes hosted by Dr. Jillian Lampert and designed to offer quick insights and meaningful support for eating disorder recovery.

You can find Peace Meal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube Music. You can also watch the podcast on YouTube. If you enjoy our show, please rate, review, subscribe, and tell your friends!

Are you interested in being a guest on Peace Meal? Email [email protected] for more information.

Episode description:

In this episode of Peace Meal, Rawnaq Albathigi joins us to share her experience with an eating disorder, and how it’s shaped the perspective she's bringing to the field as an emerging dietitian.

Drawing on a recovery journey she describes as anything but linear, Rawnaq makes the case for a more individualized understanding of healing from an eating disorder, and for treatment that's far more accessible than it currently is, especially for people whose culture and faith fall outside the Western framework much of it is built around.

About Rawnaq:

Rawnaq Albathigi (she/her) is a senior at the University of Arizona, where she is majoring in dietetics and pursuing a weight-inclusive certificate. Drawing on her own experience with an eating disorder, she hopes to become a dietitian and to make eating disorder care more accessible and culturally responsive.

We cover:

How Rawnaq's eating disorder took hold, and the purpose it served for her

What it means to make recovery progress without it being all-or-nothing

Why intuitive eating isn't the universal goal it's often made out to be

The cultural and religious realities that Western-centric treatment can miss

The barriers to eating disorder care, and who most frequently gets left out

How she stopped seeing her own recovery as separate from the work she wants to do

In Rawnaq’s words:

On trying to force a recovery timeline: "When I decided to go into nutrition around 17, I chose my major feeling like a fraud. I always thought: ‘how am I going to help others when I can't even help myself?’...I thought I was running out of time and needed to really be in recovery by the time I graduate. Not because I wanted to, but because I thought I had to if I ever wanted to be in the nutrition field…but putting that pressure on myself did not really serve me."

On the false binary of recovery: "Real recovery is rarely binary, and treating it that way, it can do more harm than good. So eating disorder recovery isn't like flipping a switch. It's much closer to a spectrum…Someone [might] eat regularly but still has eating disorder thoughts. Or they have a tough day and slip into an old behavior, but stop sooner than before. That doesn't mean they're suddenly in relapse. They're in the ‘messy middle’, what I like to call it, which is actually where most recovery happens."

On the expansiveness of recovery: "If recovery, as it's been presented to you, doesn't feel possible, I'd really encourage you to ask: is it recovery itself that feels impossible, or the version of recovery you have been given? Because those are two different things, and people deserve a version of healing that actually fits them, their culture, their experiences, their values, their reality."

Connect with Rawnaq on Instagram (@rawnaq_albathigi) and LinkedIn.

About the podcast:

Peace Meal is a podcast hosted by The Emily Program that covers topics related to eating disorders, body image, and how society may influence our thinking.

You can find Peace Meal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube Music. If you enjoy our show, please rate, review, subscribe, and tell your friends!

Are you interested in being a guest on Peace Meal? Email [email protected] for more information.

Episode description:

Pride Month is a time for protest and activism, for celebration, visibility, and community. It’s also a reminder of the inequities faced by LGBTQIA+ people, and the work that remains to ensure safety and acceptance for all. That includes addressing disproportionate adverse mental health outcomes—eating disorders among them.

Eating disorders and disordered eating affect LGBTQIA+ people at significantly higher rates than their heterosexual and cisgender peers. In this episode, Dr. Jillian Lampert explains what eating disorder treatment for this community requires, arguing that care that affirms identity and understands the realities clients face isn't just a courtesy; it’s a necessity. Recovery is possible, she says, without anyone having to “leave any part of themselves behind to heal.”

We cover:

Why the risk for eating disorders in the LGBTQIA+ community is lifelong

Where standard treatment tools fall short for transgender youth

What affirming care looks like in practice

About Dr. Jillian Lampert:

Dr. Lampert (she/her), PhD, MPH, RD, LD, FAED, is the Vice President of Strategy and Public Affairs for The Emily Program. She completed her doctorate degree in Nutrition and Epidemiology and Master of Public Health degree in Public Health Nutrition at the University of Minnesota. She earned a Master of Science degree in Nutrition at the University of Vermont and completed her dietetic internship at the University of Minnesota Hospital and Clinics. She has an expansive range of policy, clinical, research, education, teaching, and program development experience in the area of eating disorders.

Learn more about The Emily Program online or by calling 1-888-364-5977. 

Have a topic on your mind?

We want Between Bites to speak to what matters most to you. If there’s a topic you’d like us to cover in a future episode, let us know! Your questions and ideas help shape the conversation. Email [email protected] or send us a message on social.

About the podcast:

Peace Meal is a podcast hosted by The Emily Program that covers topics related to eating disorders, body image, and how society may influence our thinking.

Between Bites is a Peace Meal series of short, focused episodes hosted by Dr. Jillian Lampert and designed to offer quick insights and meaningful support for eating disorder recovery.

You can find Peace Meal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube Music. You can also watch the podcast on YouTube. If you enjoy our show, please rate, review, subscribe, and tell your friends!

Are you interested in being a guest on Peace Meal? Email [email protected] for more information.

Episode description:

Research suggests that 25 to 50 percent of people with eating disorders have also experienced trauma, and that the two conditions tend to reinforce and worsen each other when they co-occur. Despite this, care is often delivered sequentially—people are asked to address one condition before they can work on the other, even though the two are deeply intertwined.

In this episode of Peace Meal, Jenny Beck and M Mullan join host Dr. Jillian Lampert to introduce a new partial hospitalization program at The Emily Program’s Columbus, Ohio, location, built to address that gap. The program provides integrated, evidence-based care for adults living with both conditions, using Cognitive Processing Therapy alongside the multidisciplinary treatment that’s core to Emily Program care.

Jenny and M share why they built the program, who it's designed to serve, and how every detail of its design—from the schedule structure to the staff training to the size of the milieu—was shaped with traumatized nervous systems in mind.

About Jenny and M:

Jenny Beck (she/her) is Executive Director of The Emily Program’s Residential and Outpatient Treatment Centers in Columbus, Ohio. In this role, she oversees clinical services for children, adolescents, and adults across all levels of care—outpatient, intensive outpatient, partial hospitalization, and residential. Jenny has worked as a therapist since 2006 and has specialized in eating disorder care since 2014. A high point in Jenny’s professional journey was overseeing the launch of The Emily Program’s Columbus Residential Treatment Center in January 2022.

M Mullan (she/her) is the Clinical Director of The Emily Program Columbus, overseeing residential, PHP, IOP, and outpatient levels of care. She has more than a decade of experience treating eating disorders across all levels of care and is passionate about reducing barriers to treatment and recovery. M is trained in multiple evidence-based trauma treatment modalities, including the fundamentals of prolonged exposure, and has received advanced training and expert supervision in Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT). She is an approved CPT provider.

We cover:

Why trauma and eating disorders so frequently co-occur, and how each can worsen the other

The populations most affected by this overlap—and what makes them especially vulnerable

The limits of "serial” treatment that asks people to address one condition before the other

How Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) supports integrated trauma and eating disorder care

What our Trauma PHP looks like in practice, and how to access it

In Jenny and M’s words:

On the limits of treating trauma and eating disorders separately: “That serial approach—one issue at a time—doesn't really account for the inner interplay and the overlap…There's this complex relationship that we're turning into a one-dimensional reality when we don't treat the whole presentation of suffering that's at play.”

On designing care for traumatized nervous systems: “Every little inch of this program has been designed for people who have traumatic experiences in their life story in mind…This is not just an eating disorder program with CPT flopped into it. This is a program designed for their nervous systems.”

On lending hope: “There are financial lenders in the world. We, as helping professionals, are hope lenders. We like to say, if you don't have the hope, that's okay. You can borrow ours. You can hold on to ours until you find your own. And we get a lot of interest back, because there's so much joy in lending that hope and people taking advantage of it.”

About the podcast:

Peace Meal is a podcast hosted by The Emily Program that covers topics related to eating disorders, body image, and how society may influence our thinking.

You can find Peace Meal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube Music. If you enjoy our show, please rate, review, subscribe, and tell your friends!

Are you interested in being a guest on Peace Meal? Email [email protected] for more information.

Episode description:

Many people are surprised to learn that eating disorders are mental health conditions. Media coverage tends to focus on the visible markers of these illnesses—weight changes, what someone eats or doesn't eat—and stops there. In this episode, Dr. Lampert breaks down the thoughts, feelings, and neurobiology beneath those physical and behavioral components, and why understanding eating disorders as a mental health condition matters for advocacy, recognition, and getting more people connected to care.

We cover:

How eating disorders affect both mental health and physical health

Why eating disorders require specialized treatment and support

Why medication approaches differ for eating disorders

How to show up for someone who's struggling with their mental health

About Dr. Jillian Lampert:

Dr. Lampert (she/her), PhD, MPH, RD, LD, FAED, is the Vice President of Strategy and Public Affairs for The Emily Program. She completed her doctorate degree in Nutrition and Epidemiology and Master of Public Health degree in Public Health Nutrition at the University of Minnesota. She earned a Master of Science degree in Nutrition at the University of Vermont and completed her dietetic internship at the University of Minnesota Hospital and Clinics. She has an expansive range of policy, clinical, research, education, teaching, and program development experience in the area of eating disorders.

Learn more about The Emily Program online or by calling 1-888-364-5977. 

Have a topic on your mind?

We want Between Bites to speak to what matters most to you. If there’s a topic you’d like us to cover in a future episode, let us know! Your questions and ideas help shape the conversation. Email [email protected] or send us a message on social.

About the podcast:

Peace Meal is a podcast hosted by The Emily Program that covers topics related to eating disorders, body image, and how society may influence our thinking.

Between Bites is a Peace Meal series of short, focused episodes hosted by Dr. Jillian Lampert and designed to offer quick insights and meaningful support for eating disorder recovery.

You can find Peace Meal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube Music. You can also watch the podcast on YouTube. If you enjoy our show, please rate, review, subscribe, and tell your friends!

Are you interested in being a guest on Peace Meal? Email [email protected] for more information.